10/27/2022
Opening reception tomorrow 10/28, 5-7pm •
Rhona Hoffman Gallery is pleased to exhibit Vito Acconci’s Maze Table for a second time, the
first being in 1985-86. The 1985 press release attests: “Vito Acconci has been pressuring the boundaries of artistic practice since the early 70’s when he used his own body as medium, thus becoming instrumental in establishing performance art as a genre. In his site-specific installations in the later 70’s, he continued his explorations of the viewer’s relationships with his
environment, art and the artist. His sculptures distort the physical and psychological conventions of furniture.” These words maintain their veracity today, and Acconci’s legacy and influence continues to inform contemporary sculpture, design, architecture, and performance, among other artistic disciplines.
Vito Acconci’s Maze Table was originally commissioned by the Lions Gallery of the Senses in the Wadsworth Atheneum (Hartford, CT) with the assistance of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The sole artwork in an exhibition titled MATRIX, the plated glass and silicone Maze Table premiered in 1985 at the Lions Gallery of the Senses, initially conceived by Acconci with the visually impaired in mind. Considering the visitor experiences of these
individuals while explaining the structure’s material choice, Acconci stated: “I wanted to make something that sighted people would not have a privileged view of, therefore I wanted to make it transparent, with glass. A maze might be uncomfortable for a sighted person, but really
comfortable for a blind person.” Maze Table, akin to Acconci’s other projects, is concerned with functionality or lack thereof, comfort in contrast to discomfort, power and control, and tension - in this instance tension between the idea of furniture as enabling support or repose versus the materiality of the glass, elegant and enticing yet potentially precarious and harmful.
Maze Table reflects Acconci’s preoccupation with one’s environment and how the viewer navigates space. With his interactive sculptures, the visitor becomes that which activates, completes, and allows the object to reach its final form…” excerpt from PR
